If Words Could Make Wishes Come True
by hardyxrose
Summary: The half-human Doctor reflects on the banality of his existence in Pete's World. Warning for serious whump.


"John? You busy?"

He looked up from his desk, which was littered with midterm exams and red pens. So many red pens, he probably ought to buy stock in Bic to secure his future. One of the department chairs, Dr. Winstead Addison, was leaning in the doorway of his office, an anxious expression on his bird-like face. Brilliant.

"What's up?" he asked wearily, knowing that whatever it was, it couldn't be good. He and Addison had never really gotten along, especially not since he'd taken over as a department chair two years ago, and they mostly avoided each other for the sake of harmony. The last few months, the department chair had been painfully kind to him during the few encounters they'd had, but he seemed rather uncomfortable about it. If Addison was standing in his office now, it was likely because he had no other choice.

"I'm rather sorry to bother you during exam time, but I got a phone call this afternoon from a mother of one of your students, a Mrs. Mozzanni? Her son is Patrick Mozzanni."

John groaned inwardly. He knew Joan Mozzanni very well. She had showed up in his office several times over the last few weeks, to complain about the grades her son was being given. Patrick, or Tricky, as his friends called him, was consistently a problem student for him. He was a smartass, often interrupted class to voice his extremely narrow minded and dangerously close to bigoted opinions, and he was almost always ten minutes late on lecture days. Normally, he encouraged his students to discuss and share their opinions-after all, he did teach bloody philosophy. But Patrick Mozzanni was just an odious human being. He'd been accused of sexually assaulting another student on campus the previous semester, but the girl had ended up dropping the charges, and infuriatingly, the college had not expelled him because technically, there was no case against him. It was yet another reason he was becoming disenchanted with the place where he had been employed for the last five years.

Addison cleared his throat. "John? Did you hear me?"

He rubbed at his face, and sighed. "Yes, sorry. I know Mrs. Mozzanni. What did she want?"

"Well, she's upset because she thinks you're being unreasonable by refusing to give her son an extension on his essay. Apparently, he'll fail the class if he doesn't get at least a B on it. I told her I was sure you had good reasons for denying the extension, but she said that you have it out for her son, and she threatened to go over my head and contact the Dean if I didn't come and ask you to reconsider," Addison said, his beady little eyes sweeping around the room nervously.

John exhaled heavily, and began speaking in a quiet, measured tone. "I gave the entire class an extension on the essay she's referring to. I gave them an entire extra week, because so many of them complained about struggling with the material. Really, I don't think that iExistentialism is a Humanism/i is that hard to follow, but I digress. I still gave them the extension. There's not a snowball's chance in hell I'm giving Patrick more time. He was already given plenty. If he couldn't find the time to complete the essay in that extra week, that's on him. I happen to know he's not even taking a full course load right now because he's on academic probation. There's no excuse when he only has two other classes in addition to Intro to Philosophy, and according to his mother one of those classes is raquetball."

Addison blinked, and swallowed. "Oh. Well, she neglected to tell me all that."

John smirked. "Gee, why am I not surprised?"

"So what do you want to do? She's going to make a fuss if you don't give him the extension," the department chair said.

"Let her complain. I don't give a rat's ass if I have to go before the Dean to explain myself. No academic in their right mind would side with that overbearing lunatic of a woman," he spat. "And if he does, I'll just fucking quit."

Addison flushed uncomfortably. "Well alright then. Sorry to have bothered you with this."

"Yeah."

Mercifully, the department chair didn't linger, and he shut the door to the office when he left. John leaned back in his chair, sighed, and scrubbed at his face. It was definitely time for him to get the hell out of there, in more ways than one.

Johnathan Smith Noble, or, as he sometimes liked to think of himself, the Metacrisis-Formerly-Known-As-the-Doctor, was way past starting to grow tired of his job. Rose was right-she had warned him, back when he'd first accepted the position at the college. She'd told him that he would get bored with doing the same thing day after day, and he had said that cultivating young minds would be more than enough for him. He was wrong. Teaching was nowhere near as exciting as traveling the universe, and nowhere near as rewarding as he thought it ought to be. Most of his students were immature, lazy, and self-indulgent. When they got a bad grade on a test or paper, he would get an email or phone call from their mothers. They plagiarized, and acted indignant when he caught them doing it. They would sit on their laptops in class, under the guise of using them to take notes, and browse Facebook or tumblr when they thought he wasn't looking. Frankly, he was fucking sick of it. He had made repeated complaints to his department chairs, but they seemed uninterested in doing anything about it. Though he'd worked there several years, he wasn't yet tenured, and he had a feeling that they would not be renewing his contract when it was up in three months. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. He wasn't sure if he was anxious or relieved.

He could hear Rose in his head-i"Stop being so proud and call Pete! Come work for Torchwood, and get back to fighting aliens and saving the universe. I promise you, you'll be so much happier."/i

He had heard it a dozen times before, at least once every time he'd complained about a particular student's chronic lateness, another's inability to differentiate between to, too, and two and your and you're in written assignments, a third who insisted on dressing like she'd been raised in a brothel and was proving a distraction to both male and female students, and a fourth with such foul body odor that the two seats on either side, behind, and in front of him were usually vacant.

When he saw her tonight, he was going to finally bite the bullet and tell her he would call Pete about coming to work for Torchwood. He could finish out his contract, and then leave the college behind, like he had left Gallifrey all those years ago, when he'd literally been a different man. Some days, it was hard to remember what he'd even been like before Rose, before big ears and leather and Northern accents, before pinstripes and plimsolls and sideburns and hair gel. It was hard to imagine a life without her in it. He didn't know who he was without her, the girl (woman) who had once referred to him as her 'bespoke Doctor'. She was the only thing left that really made him feel like he was still the Doctor, even if he had only one heart and a brain that was merely capable of multitasking maybe two dozen things at a time as opposed to a hundred. He had been worried she would have trouble accepting him as a substitute for the full-on Time Lord, but from the moment he had whispered 'I love you' in her ear on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay, they had been inseparable. Their four year wedding anniversary had passed just last month, and their daughter, Rosena, would be six months old just next week. He loved the baby so much that often times when he held her, he would be seized with an overwhelming feeling of panic: iwhat if I let her down? What if I bollocks this up? What if I'm a bad father?/i He could think of nothing more terrifying than failing his and Rose's daughter.

It was late when he finally left work, leaving half a stack of exams ungraded, and he was bone weary. It was more than an hour past when he usually left. Rose, bless her, never complained when he was late, and the thought of seeing her and their daughter was the only thing that had been sustaining him all day. Rosena was with Jackie at the moment, but he would be picking her up later, after him and Rose had gotten a chance to have some alone time. He drove the twenty minutes on autopilot, only half listening to the radio, which sometimes faded in and out, something he kept meaning to fix but never got around to. It just didn't feel important enough in the wake of everything else. The gate was locked when he pulled up, as it always was after dusk. Thankfully, he had a makeshift sonic screwdriver that made having a key unnecessary. She was waiting for him in their usual spot when he parked the car.

"God, are you a sight for sore eyes," he said with a smile, coming to sit down next to her. He didn't wait for her to answer before he plowed on, detailing the frustrations of the day.

That was the thing about Rose. She always allowed him to vent and talk about his day without interrupting or accusing him of rambling, which he knew he had a tendency to do. The truth was, he couldn't talk to anyone else like he talked to her. No one got him like she did, no one else ever would or could.

"You were right," he said ruefully. "I should've taken the position at Torchwood. This will come as no surprise to you, because I've been bending your ear about how much I hate it for months now, but I'm sick of the college. I don't think they're going to renew my contract, and I don't want them to anyway. I'm going to give Pete a call, talk to him about maybe working in the archives, identifying and repurposing alien tech. It'd be a much better use of my many and varied skills. I'd love to work in the field, but I know we both agree that's probably not a good idea. Maybe before Rosena, yeah, but certainly not now. Perhaps when she's older."

He picked an errant dandelion puff from the grass and twirled it between his fingers. "Make a wish," he said, turning to Rose. He pursed his lips and blew, scattering the seeds into the air. The wind picked them up, blowing some of them back into his face. He didn't need to look at her to know she'd be silently laughing. He wished she would reach out and brush the seeds from his stubbled cheeks and the wiry hair of his sideburns, but he was left wanting.

"Alright, so maybe I didn't think that one through."

He asked her what she wished for, but she wouldn't tell him. She never did. Wishes only came true, she had told him before, if they were kept a secret. He still always asked her though, in the hopes that one day she might actually tell him.

He realized his error before she could point it out to him. "Shit," he said apologetically. "I meant to pick up chips. Hope you can forgive me for forgetting. I was in such a rush to get out of work and come to see you that it slipped my mind."

She forgave him, of course. She always did, without pointing out that the real Doctor probably would've remembered, or at least would've gone back in time and left himself a post-it note reminder. She'd always been kind that way, his sweet, brilliant girl.

From his pocket, his mobile began vibrating. The caller ID popped up-"The Oncoming Slap".

"Sorry," he said apologetically. "I'd better take this, it's your mother. Hey, Jackie, what's going on?"

"John, it's almost nine. When are you coming to get Rosena?"

"Sorry, I got out of work late. I literally just sat down with Rose a few minutes ago. I figured we'd spend a little time together, and then I'd come pick Rosena up."

"You're with Rose?" Jackie asked, sounding exasperated.

He laughed. "Well, yeah. Where else would I be?"

"John, it's been months now. You can't keep doing this. One day, someone's going to catch you in there after dark, and how is that going to look?"

"It's not like I'm doing anything wrong. I'm spending time with my wife. That's a husband's right, isn't it?" he bristled.

"John, Rose is dead," Jackie said gently. "She died, giving birth to your daughter. Your daughter, who needs her father. You're all she has left now, and you can't keep doing this. You can't keep breaking into the cemetery. I'm telling you this because I love you, but for Rosena's sake, you need to get your shit together. I think you need to see a therapist or a grief counselor, because it is painfully obvious that you aren't coping."

"I'm coping the best way that I know how," he said softly.

"By refusing to acknowledge that she's gone? You of all people should know, that isn't healthy. Listen, I know it's hard for you. It always has been. But you aren't alone. You have me and Pete and Tony. You have Jake. You have Rosena. Focus on that. You're missing out on precious moments with your living daughter so you can talk to a stone in the ground," Jackie said, not unkindly.

"How can you talk about her like that? She's your daughter!" he said, his voice raising with anger.

"Yes, she was my daughter, and I raised her by myself because Pete died when she was six months old. Take the tough love, because that's all you're going to get. I'm not without sympathy for you, but if I did it on a council estate, then you sure as hell can do it in a row home in London. I'm almost fifty years old, Doctor. I'm not signing up to take care of an infant. You can't just keep leaving her with me and Pete while you swan off to the cemetery for hours at a time! Your life isn't a bloody song by the Smiths!"

He sighed, and pulled at his face. "Alright, just let me say goodbye and I'll be right over."

"Drive carefully. And for God's sake, try not to let anyone see you leaving," Jackie warned before ringing off.

He hung up the phone, and turned back to the grave. "Well, suppose you heard all that. I know I just got here, but I have to go. I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'll come back, tomorrow. Maybe I'll bring Rosena with me. We can have a picnic. She's getting so big, you should see her."

He got to his feet, and looked down on the stone. Even in the dark, he knew exactly what it said there. It was burned forever into his tortured mind, carved eternally into his broken heart, a written inscription and an engraving of a single rose, a period where there should've been a semicolon.

iRose Marion Tyler-Noble

Mother, daughter, wife, friend.

b. 27 April 1986

d. 13 June 2020

Grieve not for me, my family dear. I am not dead, but sleeping here. With patience wait-perforce to die, and in a short time, you'll come to I./i

Jackie and Pete had picked the epitaph. They had arranged the whole funeral, because he had been wrought with grief and utterly incapable at the time. Rose's death had been both sudden and unexpected. She had gone into labor six weeks early, and it had not been an easy labor. She had pushed for several hours before the exertion had finally caused the hidden, deadly blood clot in her brain to burst, killing her almost instantly. With him clutching desperately at her hand and screaming her name, her bloodshot eyes had fluttered shut for the final time. He had refused to leave her body afterwards, had stayed huddled over her prone and lifeless form. It had taken three orderlies to pull him from the room so the doctor could pronounce time of death, and he had fought them tooth and claw. He had spent that night sitting outside the morgue, in an area usually reserved for those waiting to identify the bodies of their loved ones. Jackie and Pete had both tried unsuccessfully to coax him away, to at least catch a few hours sleep, but he refused. Several times, uneasy security guards had drifted by like ghosts, but none had had the nerve to ask the heartbroken widower to leave. It was several days later until he could actually bring himself to sit by Rosena's incubator and touch her tiny, fragile body after scrubbing his skin raw with soap and steaming hot water. The nurses had had to show him how to feed her-somehow, in over 900 years, he had never actually fed a baby. Not a human one, anyway. He'd had children before, of course, but that had been on Gallifrey and his wife had been the one who'd cared for them, as custom dictated. There was so much he didn't know, had been relying on Rose to guide him through. Instead, Jackie had been the one to teach him most of the things he would need to know to take care of his daughter, and she had been the one to do those things, more frequently than him, at any rate.

Loving his daughter was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, the hardest thing he'd done since deciding to use the Moment to end the Time War, and the Time Lords and Daleks with it. On the one hand, she was a piece of his precious Rose, the last piece of her. On the other hand, she had been the harbinger of Rose's untimely fate. He still hadn't completely reconciled that within himself, but he loved his daughter the best way he knew how. Still, in his single heart he knew that Jackie was right. He had spent more time in the cemetery the last six months than he had with Rosena. He was being a bad father. And Rose would be furious if she could see him now.

"I'm sorry," he said, leaking tears onto the top of her pink marble tombstone. "I'm so, so sorry. It's just...I don't know how to breathe without you. We were supposed to grow old together, that was the plan. You and me, until we were both wrinkled and grey. But we never planned for this, did we? Every time I look in her face, I see you and it makes me want to cry and scream and shout. I saved the universe so many times, and this is the thanks I get. I'm just...oh Rose, I'm heartbroken, but I'm so angry, too. Angry that you were taken before your time, that our daughter will grow up without a mother, that our time together was cut short. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light. Blood and anger and revenge."

He sniffled, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He caught a glance at his watch, and saw that it was somehow already 9:30. He had been standing there ruminating for far longer than he'd realized or intended. It was a half an hour drive to the Tyler mansion from the cemetery, and he'd told Jackie over thirty minutes ago that he was on his way. She'd probably already wound up her slapping arm in preparation for his arrival.

"Goodbye, Rose," he said softly, leaning down to brush his lips against the top of the stone, as he did every time he left her.

He cried almost the entire drive to Pete and Jackie's, tears blurring his vision to the point that he drifted back and forth over the yellow line several times without really noticing. He had to swerve to avoid one car, the driver of which honked angrily before flashing a rude hand gesture at him. He had been doing okay, not stellar, but okay, until "Time in a Bottle" came on the radio, a request from a lovesick listener. A knot formed in his chest, and he burst into a fresh slew of hot tears. That was the song he and Rose had danced to at their wedding, and hearing it made his carefully constructed composure crumble like so much dust. At one point, he was sobbing so hysterically that he had to pull the car over and breathe into an empty old paper takeaway sack to calm himself down. It still smelled vaguely of the Chinese food that it had carried, which only served to make him nauseous, on top of being a crying, snotty mess. He dried his eyes on the bottom of his shirt, blew his nose on a used napkin, and drove the rest of the way to the Tyler mansion, his breath hitching in his throat.

When he finally pulled up to the house, Jackie was outside on the veranda, smoking a cigarette. It was a habit she had given up years ago, but had taken back up since Rose's death.

"Those things will kill you, you know," he said with no malice in his tone.

"Nevermind the cigarettes, iyou/i are going to kill me, Doctor. I can't keep doing this with you. Keeping Rosena, never knowing if and when you'll show up. Pete and I have been patient because we know how hard this has been on you, but our patience is wearing thin," Jackie said, exhaling a thin plume of smoke.

"I know, and I'm sorry," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Actually, can I get one of those?"

He sat down next to her, and wordlessly, she passed him the little cardboard packet and her fancy mother of pearl lighter. He lit the cigarette, and inhaled deeply, exhaling through his nose. "You know, I've lost loved ones before. That's the curse of living such a long life, and spending so much time with humans," he said, smoke curling around him, obscuring his face.

"I could live in the same body for hundreds of years, and never wrinkle, never get a grey hair. And now I get them all the damn time. I've stopped looking, because everyday there's a new one...and I'm going off on a tangent, aren't I?"

Jackie just nodded, but didn't say anything, perhaps sensing his need to unload to someone who was actually there, and could respond accordingly.

"What was I saying?" he asked, scratching his chin with the hand not holding his cigarette. "Oh, yeah! Anyway...humans. Next to a Time Lord, your lifespan seems like a mayfly's. I traveled with so many people over the years. So many of them are gone now, more than I care to count. I've lost dozens of companions, because they left or they died or otherwise moved on. I lost my wife, and my children, my grandchildren."

"That must have been hard," Jackie commented quietly. "Losing so many people, so close together."

"Oh, it was," he replied. "But that was so, so long ago. It was the beginning of the war when I lost them, and the war went on for hundreds of years. I was a different man then, literally. You would think, after several centuries of having people come and go from my life in the blink of an eye, that I would get used to it, or be better at coping, but I'm not. Not at all. I'm just complete rubbish at it. I have all these goddamn emotions, it just seems like there are so many of them and they just well up inside me and leave me feeling...like I don't even know what. But they're feelings that are so foreign to me-my people were stodgy and stoic. They frowned on overt displays of affection or emotion. I can count on one hand the number of times one of my parents ever hugged me. I just want to cry all the time now, and I don't know if it's because I'm half-human or half-Donna or if it's even normal to cry so much, whatever species you are. It's been years, and I still don't know how to be human. I'm just bloody useless."

"Sound like a bundle of laughs, those Time Lords," Jackie said.

"You're supposed to say 'you're not useless, Doctor'," he supplied helpfully.

"You're not useless," she agreed. "Honestly, it's not like there's an exact science to grief. Everyone processes loss differently, there is no set timeline. It's not like Victorian times, where there were conventions, and everyone expected you to wear black for at least a year and all that other complicated nonsense. And you aren't alone in feeling lost in your grief. I was a mess when Pete died. My original Pete. I had so much guilt over the way I treated him, the horrible things I said to him before he died. It ate away at me for years," Jackie admitted.

"So how did you cope?" the Doctor asked. Between his fingers, the cigarette burned, forgotten.

"Having Rose was the only thing that kept me afloat," she answered. "I had to be strong for her, you know? Because she didn't have a dad, she only had her mum, and I had to be as good as two parents. I know it's hard with Rosena. It's hard not to think that if she'd never been born, Rose might still be alive. But that isn't fair to her. Because that aneurysm would've burst eventually, either way. Because she's innocent in all this. And that little girl deserves love, just as much as any child with two parents. And it's your job now to give that love to her. Enough love for you and Rose both. Loving her is going to be the only thing that will get you through this."

He sighed, and pulled at his face. "I know you're right. I just...I feel so inadequate. I feel like I failed Rose. She'd been having headaches, and we both blew it off, thinking it was just stress and pregnancy hormones causing them. I feel like I should've known...but she literally had no other symptoms. I've thought back, to those weeks before the baby was born, and I've analyzed every little thing she said and did, driven myself mad over it, and there was nothing. But I still can't help feeling like I should've somehow known. Some fucking doctor I am. I failed my wife, and I'm terrified I'm going to do the same to my daughter."

"It wasn't your fault, and you didn't fail anyone. No one could have known or predicted. What you're feeling is survivor's guilt. It's normal. But the way you've been handling it…" Jackie said, her voice trailing off.

"Not normal. I know," he replied.

"And if you keep on going like you have been these past few months...then yeah, you are failing your daughter. And Rose would be so disappointed in you. I'm not trying to make you feel bad, it's just that it needs to be said. Rosena is young. She's not going to remember how absent you were the first few months of her life, and none of us will ever tell her. But iyou/i will regret it forever if you miss things like her first words or first steps. You need to be the anchor in her life. Because it will be hard for her too, when she's old enough to understand what she's lost," Jackie chided, articulating the things he had known all along, but had been too afraid to admit to himself.

"Where is she?" he asked finally, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray and vacating the chair. He stood, hands shoved in his pockets, rocking anxiously on the balls of his feet.

"She's upstairs, sleeping in her car seat. I put her in it when you said you were on your way over.. Come on," Jackie said, getting up and letting them into the house.

"Is Pete around?" he asked as they walked up the stairs together.

"He's making sure Tony gets to bed. We let him stay up a little later than usual. He was hoping to see you, I think. He has school tomorrow, though, and it just got too late."

More guilt flooded him. He had been neglecting more than just his daughter. He'd been neglecting the only family he had in the world. "Maybe I can come by for dinner next week. I've been thinking about a job change, maybe finally taking up Pete on his offer."

"You know you're always welcome here, Doctor," Jackie said, placing a hand on his shoulder. She pushed opened the door to what had once upon a time been Tony's nursery. Rosena was dead asleep in her car seat in the middle of the floor. Hesitantly, he stepped forward, and grabbed the handle at the top of the seat. He hefted it off the floor, carefully but easily.

"Thank you, Jackie. For everything," he said when he left her at the front door.

"Don't be a stranger, Doctor. I want to see my grandbaby, but I want to see you, too," she said, smiling, before she shut the door behind him.

He handled the car seat much the same way someone might handle a ticking bomb. Rosena luckily did not stir when he buckled her into the backseat of his car. He turned off the radio and drove home in silence, except for the steady, even sound of the baby's breathing and the road unfurling beneath the tires. She only woke up when he went to move her from her car seat to the crib. She opened her honey brown eyes and stared up at him, and for a moment he thought she was about to start wailing. Instead, her face split into a wide grin, and she began giggling and cooing.

"Da da da da da," she babbled at him happily, reaching out for him, capturing his finger in her tiny little fist, and beginning the process of thawing the ice that had formed around his heart over the last six months.

"Da da da da da," he babbled back at her, tickling her belly and making her chortle and squeal with delight. He knew there was no true significance to the sounds she was making, that they were just the easiest syllables to form for a baby her age. But still, he couldn't help but take it as a sign-that she forgave him for not being around before, because he was here now. And if she could forgive him, maybe, just maybe, he could begin to forgive himself.


End file.
